Seishoku pressed off-spec dyed fabric into NUNOUS, a new stone-like material

Sustainable Brands reported that Seishoku, a fabric-dyeing and processing company founded in 1880 in Okayama, Japan, developed NUNOUS from out-of-spec fabric. The firm dyes up to 50 kilometres of fabric a day, and inevitable imperfections leave 1 to 2 percent of output unsellable. Managers found it hard to throw away fabric that was well dyed apart from small flaws or uneven colour, and wanted to recycle it while keeping the colours.

With the Industrial Technology Center of Okayama Prefecture, Seishoku developed a lamination technique that layers hundreds of fabric sheets between resin film and then heats and presses them into sheets. The resin is a biopolymer made from non-edible sugarcane. The result is soft to the touch yet solid and heavy, with layered colours, and can resemble fabric, leather or stone.

In the five years after its 2018 development, the material was used in many projects. A company turned old work uniforms into office decorations, and an apparel brand used trouser offcuts to make clothes shown at Paris Fashion Week.

Dyeing at a scale of 50 km a day inevitably produces off-spec fabric.

The beautifully dyed colours were the part worth keeping.

A resin laminate lets any fibre type, such as cotton, hemp or wool, be bonded.

A sugarcane biopolymer keeps the new material's environmental impact lower.

Waste with an attractive property, here colour, can be the raw material of a new product line when a processing step reveals that property.

As of the 2023 report, Seishoku was working to improve fire resistance and raise the maximum sheet size above 450 by 250 mm, which would allow uses such as wallpaper. President Akira Himei says most application ideas come from customers.